


Relax and Fly Casual

by igrockspock



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Backstory, Banter, Bittersweet Ending, Family, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, putting the fun in dysfunctional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: A father-son smuggling trip is not the kind of quality time Ben had in mind.





	Relax and Fly Casual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/gifts).



“Relax,” Han says, “Fly casual.”

Ben grits his teeth and grips the throttle harder. What can that _possibly_ mean? They’re surrounded by the Republic Navy, and what they’re transporting is not precisely legal. If they dump the cargo, the Hutts will kill them; if the Navy catches them, his mother’s political career is over. Oh, and the Falcon is probably about to explode. Because it is always about to explode, in spite of its reputation as the best and fastest ship in the entire galaxy.

Ben says the only thing that comes to mind, which is, “I hate you.”

“I know,” his father says, which is also how he responds to _I love you_. He elbows Ben in the ribs. “Just fly casual, okay?”

“Casual _ly_ ,” Ben says through gritted teeth. “It’s an adverb.”

He doesn’t look at his father, but he doesn’t have to; he can practically _hear_ the eye roll.

A vein is pounding in Ben’s forehead. Mother says that fifteen is too young for that sort of thing, and he mentally tells her to go kriff herself while a drop of sweat rolls down his forehead. Leia Organa has absolutely _no_ business telling other people not to be angry. Her reaction when he’d said that to her was proof enough.

Han nudges him with the toe of his boot. 

“Don’t say it again,” Ben says, biting off every word. “And if you have to say it, at least have the decency to tell me what fly casually _means_.”

“It means fly like you don’t have illegal quad cannons mounted on the gun ports and ten kilos of spice underneath the shaak steaks in the cargo bay,” he answers, implacable as ever.

Maybe Ben would know how to do this if he’d ever gotten to actually _fly casually_. Like a normal boy, whose normal father flies recreational aircraft through the skies of Chandrila. Or perhaps like a slightly less normal boy, whose otherwise straightlaced uncle owns an outmoded yet structurally sound X-wing that he’s perfectly happy to let his nephew fly. But his father only says _I didn’t raise no starfighter pilot_ and takes Ben on illicit cargo runs instead.

“We have a lot of money. Why do we smuggle drugs?” Ben asks. Clenching his jaw is starting to hurt, and his knuckles are white against the faded black pleather on the throttle. “Don’t answer that,” he adds, because there probably isn’t a good answer and if there is, he doesn’t want to hear it when the Navy is breathing down their necks. He forces himself to look at his father and ask, “Can you please describe exactly what you mean by fly casual?”

Asking feelings like weakness. His father believes _life_ is casual, something you figure out as you go along, which might make sense to someone who wasn’t half-raised by a protocol droid and a former princess. Ben knows how to properly utilize the dining utensils of twelve different cultures and how to set the table for state dinner. He does not understand how to live in a world with no rules.

Han clears his throat. Ben feels his body go tense beside him, the way it always does when he’s trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between their two worlds.

Finally, he says, “Like you can’t see the patrols. Like space is yours and you belong here. So let go of the throttle and do what you’d do if we were at home.”

Home, Ben almost points out, is a complex concept whose meaning varies highly depending on how well his parents are getting along on any given day. Instead, he carefully relaxes his grip on the throttle and breathes a small sigh of relief when he can feel his fingertips again. 

Then, just when he is almost comfortable, his father adds, “But be ready to hightail it out of here. If they send fighters after us, they’re not messing around.”

Just then, a crisp voice calls in. “Captain Yacharian, the Navy of the Republic clears you for transit. Have a pleasant journey.” 

Who in the kriffing hell is Captain Yacharian? Ben wonders. And how did the Falcon get his ID tags? He keeps his body carefully straight, trying not to let his relief show. He passed the test.

His father leans over to ruffle his hair, his grin sharp and pleased. “Nice work, kid,” he says.

Ben bats the hand away and snaps, “If we’re smuggling together, I’d appreciate it if you’d quit calling me kid. _Father._ ”

“ _Father?_ How about you ditch the weird formal poodoo and then we’ll talk?”

“As you wish, Han,” he says, which never fails to get under his father’s skin. The jab is spoiled when he whacks his skull on the bulkhead while trying to get out of the pilot’s seat. He’s been getting taller, and he’s still not used to it.

“Careful there, kid,” Han says. He _always_ gets the last word. Ben loves and hates him for it.

***

Mos Eisley is stultifying and vaguely threatening, just as Ben remembers it from countless childhood visits that his mother isn’t supposed to know about but probably does. He veers toward the less dodgy cantina, the one on the nicer end of the shipyard, where he’s accustomed to waiting while his father takes care of his business. This time, though, Han loops his arm around his shoulders and drawls, “Where do you think you’re going? You gotta collect your credits.”

Ben’s mouth goes dry. “My credits?” he mutters. “From the Hutts?” His voice comes out higher than he means for it to, and he winces.

If his father notices his alarm, he doesn’t say anything. Just, “You were the pilot, weren’t you? C’mon, you gotta finish the job.”

Ben has not been instructed in the protocol for this type of mission. Chewie had taught him long ago to mind his body language so that other Wookiees wouldn’t tear off his arms. C3PO had taught him table manners for dozens of worlds, and his mother is teaching him the finer points of diplomatic negotiations. But no one has ever told him how to extract payment from a Hutt for illicit drugs, and his father so rarely provides explicit instructions for anything. He should twist out of his father’s grasp, station himself firmly on the broken sidewalk, refuse to move. Instead, he keeps walking, propelled along by his father’s easy gait.

“You’re not scared, right?” Han asks, his bravado cracking just long enough to shoot Ben a rare uncertain look. It’s a look he knows from his childhood, one that acknowledges that his dad isn’t quite sure how to do this whole fatherhood business, that he means well but honestly has no clue what is and is not appropriate for a child. Ben had seen it the first time when his hand was wrapped around a blaster, his finger barely big enough to pull the trigger. Mother had shouted rather a lot that day, never mind that he’d done an awfully good job hitting the target.

Ben does his best to smooth the uncertainty out of his face. He’s missing a galactic geography exam for this, but he cannot and will not refuse the gift of time from his father.

“Of course I’m not afraid,” he says, trying to emulate the looseness of his father’s stride. At length, he allows himself to add, “Do you think it’s possible the Hutts might not like the son of the Huttslayer?”

Han shrugs. “It’s not about like or dislike. It’s about getting the job done.” He pauses. “Don’t get too close. And don’t stand on any grates.”

“Because there will be a sarlacc pit underneath them?” he hazards. His mother had given him a book once, hand illustrated on flimsiplast. It was called _The Very Hungry Sarlaccc,_ and rather a lot of people had been eaten.

“Nah,” his father waves an airy hand. “That’s way out in the desert. Probably just a rancor.”

 _Just a rancor._ Ben tries to ignore the sudden flutter in his stomach. This is very different from the trips he takes with his mother.

***

Deelo the Hutt stinks.

Gustatory and olfactory preferences differ widely among species, Ben knows. On diplomatic missions with his mother, he’s already kept a straight face while eating foods that would make most of his classmates vomit. He can usually keep an open mind, but this is different. It’s like the aroma of an entire swamp is emanating from the one slug-like being perched on a dais at the center of the room. 

The stench is distracting him from what he really needs to do, which is scan the room for exits while also avoiding eye contact with the myriad of beings who might find such forwardness offensive. He narrowly manages to step around the grate in the floor, which emanates its own special aroma of putrefying flesh. 

Dozens of eyes are on him when he steps to the front of the audience chamber. He wonders vaguely if he ought to open with any niceties, but no, it’s not a diplomatic negotiation. Better to get in and out as quickly as possible.

“We’ve brought the shipment,” he says simply, gesturing at the hoversled of plain gray crates floating by his father’s knees.

A group of Gamorran servants rush forward to retrieve it, and Deelo throws a bag of credits right in front of the grate. _Rude_ , Ben thinks. A slimy green handprint glistens on the black fabric. Clearly, he’s meant to step across the grate and retrieve it, but he has no intention of doing that. He stretches out his hand and the bag leaps forward. Small, surprised gasps explode behind him. The Gamorran guards brandish their axes while some of the spectators shuffle away.

“It seems light,” Ben says, because he doubts crime lords pay fair unless you make them. Not that he know how to make Deelo the Hutt pay fairly. Or, for that matter, what constitutes fair pay for drug smuggling.

When Deelo blinks, her slime-covered eyelashes leave faint green trails of slime on her face. “Your son is brave, Solo,” she says. “Take the credits and I’ll ignore your _other_ activities.”

 _We have other activities?_ Ben almost bursts out. That would have been nice to know before he started this little negotiation. And for kriff’s sake, what are they dealing besides drugs?

“Fair deal,” his father says. “But if I see any of your lackeys tailing me out of here…”

Deelo’s lips curve upward in a grotesque smile. “You can kill them for incompetence and save me the trouble.”

Back in the light, his father ruffles his hair again and says, “You did good in there, kid.”

“ _Kid_?” Ben explodes. “We’re smuggling drugs and the maker knows what else, and you won’t even tell me why! You just sent me to negotiate with a _Hutt_ for kriff’s sake! And you think I’m a _kid_?”

“Well, a _competent_ kid,” his father says, unruffled as ever. He smiles. “Don’t tell me that wasn’t a little bit fun. Did you _see_ how rattled they were when you got that bag?”

It _had _been fun, Ben realizes with a jolt. Or at any rate, it was less terrifying than he’d expected. Not that he was about to admit it out loud.__

__“This is not what I thought you had in mind when you said we should spend more quality time together,” he snaps and strides on ahead, even though he has absolutely no idea where they’re going._ _

____

***

Back on the streets of Mos Eisley, Ben starts to wonder if the girls at school might be impressed by his exploits. He pictures himself leaning casually against the wall like his father, a blaster dangling from the holster at his hip. No, no blaster - he would be expelled from school for that. Just the leaning then, and perhaps the utility pants. It would be worth the uniform violation for the day. And then he would say _I sold ten kilos of spice to the Hutts this weekend. What about you?_

No, it would never work. He can picture the horror on their faces already. His classmates think spice is terrible, mostly because it is. Being an upper level distributor with ties to a crime syndicate is not attractive. They would probably contact law enforcement, and there would be a scandal. 

It’s really not fair how often he has to make this sort of calculation, Ben reflects bitterly. Once his teacher had called home after he’d written a very vivid description of the six-breasted Askajian woman he’d seen dancing at a cantina over summer holidays. Then he’d almost been suspended from school when he taught his classmates how to play sabacc. Naturally, he was better than them, so he’d made a tidy profit. In the ensuing parent-teacher conferences, the headmaster described him as “a veritable fountain of forbidden knowledge” bent on corrupting his classmates with information about gambling, armaments, and xeno-sexuality. His mother had had to tell his father that wasn’t a compliment. Not for the first time, he wishes he could have a normal family that does normal things - the kinds of things you can write in school reports and discuss with girls without risking legal sanction.

His father’s hand tightens around his shoulder. “Look up, kid,” he says. “This ain’t the place to be distracted.”

For the first time, he notices they’ve turned onto the side streets behind the dodgy cantina, the one where his namesake had apparently sliced off someone’s arm in a brawl. 

“Am I going to have to shoot anyone?” he asks. “I’m trying to limit the number of felonies I commit in one day.”

“Just act like you can handle yourself and everything will be fine,” his father says, but the uncertain look is back again. As if he’s just realized this sort of errand is not appropriate for a teenage boy. 

“Did you do things like this when you were my age?” Ben asks. His father doesn’t care to talk about the past; Ben only knows that there was little food and a lot of crime. Even now, he doesn’t really answer, just gives a little shrug that Ben takes to mean yes.

“Because you had to or because you wanted to?” Ben presses.

His father shoots him an annoyed look and gestures toward the many foreboding alleyways that line their route. “You really wanna have this conversation _now_?”

“It’s not like you’ll ever answer anyway,” Ben says, which sounds petty, but it’s true. He thinks his parents would seem less bizarre if they would tell him _why_ they’re weird, but it’s all vague references to a war he’s supposed to be too young to understand, even though they let him fly around the galaxy on smuggling trips.

His father deflates. Silence hangs between them, punctuated only by the sound of whatever is slithering through the garbage in the streets.

Suddenly his father’s eyes go wide. “Now’s really not the time,” he says, and he shoves Ben to the ground before a bright green blaster bolt sails overhead.

Ben’s fumbling for his blaster when another shot flies past his hand, close enough that he can smell the sharp scent of ionized air. Laughter echoes through the alleyway. From his vantage point on the ground, Ben sees battered combat boots approaching through the dust. Their owner is a slender man whose neatly trimmed mustache seems at odds with tattered pieces of old military uniforms he wears. Not that Ben gets to contemplate the contrast for long. Without warning, his father launches himself across the alleyway, grabs the intruder by the lapels, and shoves him against a mud-caked wall.

“You fired on my _kid,_ Ducane? And you think it’s _funny_?” his father asks, shoving the man further back against the wall.

“You were distracted. It was a friendly warning shot, nothing more.” The man -- Ducane -- doesn’t look overly concerned by the violent confrontation. Somehow he even manages to shrug his shoulders. “If I’d wanted either one of you dead, you would be.”

Ben’s only real combat training is target practice on the firing range, but he has an idea that you don’t let your enemy keep his gun. He stretches out his hand, and the blaster leaps forward, landing in his palm with a satisfying thunk.

“In any case, the boy hardly seems defenseless,” Ducane says, and Han finally releases his hold. He steps forward, dusting off his jacket, and reaches out for the blaster. “Now, if you’ll just return my weapon, we can call this a misunderstanding and move along.”

Ben looks down at the weapon in his hand. He can tell the laser focus is a special modification; it’s made of polished steel, while the rest of the gun has clearly seen better days. He wouldn’t mind owning something like this one day. Or now, since he doesn’t think this Ducane can take it back.

“Oh please,” Ducane says, glancing at gray crates still idling on the hoversled. “I hardly care about your little side business. Your heart is too soft for your own good, Solo, but it’s nothing to me.”

What does _that_ mean? Ben wonders. With a sigh, he ejects the clip from the blaster and passes it back. Telling his mother how he obtained an extra blaster would be more trouble than it’s worth, and anyway, if he wants to enroll in the Naval Flight Academy, he really should limit his felonies to the bare necessities. Stealing an illegally modified blaster after smuggling spice to a criminal syndicate is perhaps over the line.

“So, onward with the smuggling,” he says when Ducane’s back has disappeared around the corner. What he really wants is to ask if he’d handled the confrontation correctly, but he knows asking for protocol will only dampen whatever triumph he’s achieved. Instead he follows his father around the labyrinthine alleyways without asking any more questions.

They take a sharp turn through a crumbling stone archway, and suddenly they’re surrounded by children. Ben’s read enough travel guides to know that street urchins frequently work in gangs to pickpocket wary travelers, but he can’t bring himself to worry about his wallet or his hard-earned credits from the Hutts. The children’s faces are streaked with dirt, and their bodies are far too thin beneath their mismatched clothes. 

A woman appears at the periphery of the alleyway. Red hair gleams beneath her plain gray hood, but when her eyes light on the crates, her face lights up.

“I knew I could count on you,” she says, squeezing his father’s arm. Then she glides over to the crates and pops them open.

Ben holds his breath, feeling oddly dizzy. The Hutts, Ducane, the strange comment about having too soft a heart… He’s always known that his family was, at best, untraditional, but this adventure has been over the top even by the strange standards of the Organa-Solo household. He’s afraid to see what’s inside the leftover crates, but he still can’t help but watch as the woman pops them open.

The first thing he sees is a row of boxes stamped with white crosses.

“Bacta!” she exclaims. “This will last us for six months at least!”

The older children swarm around her, ready to carry the precious supplies inside a crumbling building that Ben realizes must be a medical clinic. The younger ones are waiting next to the other unopened crate on the hoversled. They’re quiet -- too quiet for such a large group of children, he thinks -- but shifting eagerly on their feet. 

“It’s full of food, isn’t it?” he says quietly to his father, who’s leaning against the clinic’s doorway with a coolness that Ben envies. Has always envied, really. There are no instructions for it, no protocol he can follow, no way he can ever look that self-assured.

And yet, his father won’t quite look at him.

He shrugs his shoulders. “Just rations. Fell off the back of a Navy supply ship.”

“We smuggle drugs and stolen relief supplies?” Ben asks. 

“Borrowed military surplus,” his father corrects. He glances at Ben for a moment, but looks away quickly. “Anyway, you do enough for the Hutts, they look the other way about the rest.”

Ben steps in front of his father so that he can’t look away anymore. They’re almost the same height now, he realizes with a small jolt of surprise.

“You’re acting like this isn’t a big deal,” he says incredulously. 

“It’s not,” his father says forcefully. “It’s a hard galaxy to live in. _This_ ” -- he gestures at the children tearing apart ration packs in the alleyway -- “is just a little bit to make it easier.”

Ben swallows. “You do this every time you leave,” he says, and his father nods again. Ben had lost count of the number of times he’d watched the _Falcon_ fly away from him. Every time he’d tried to make his heart a little harder, until he could finally convince himself that he didn’t care. Now his father is looking at him with a vulnerable expression he’d never seen before. 

“Is this trip an apology?” he asks slowly.

His father offers him a half-smile that makes him look more like the self-assured smuggler he’d always known. “Did it work?”

Ben peers into the clinic, where the red-haired woman is cleaning off a child’s skinned knees with the bacta gel. “It depends,” he says, drawing in a breath. “When can we do it again?”

***

Fifteen years later, Kylo Ren tucks his mask carefully beneath his bunk and changes into an old pair of navy utility pants. A red stripe runs down the side. His blaster feels heavy on his hip. The transformation to Ben Solo is complete.

The decking of the stolen cargo hauler vibrates under his feet. _No, not stolen,_ he thinks. _Liberated._ He’d borrowed it from an impound yard while he was supposed to be convalescing.

The proximity alert chimes, and he slides into the pilot’s seat. The Order blockade over Hays Minor snaps into focus on the viewscreen, and he tightens his hands around the throttle, imagining needles of electricity shooting down his nerve endings. If Snoke finds out what he’s doing…

 _Relax,_ a voice says in his head. _Fly casual._

The memory pierces his heart and soothes it all at once. He forces his hands to relax around the throttle until he can feel blood flowing to his fingertips again. Then he flips the comm.

“This is Captain Yacharian, requesting nav clearance,” he says in his boredest drawl, the one he’d practiced for hours in his bedroom after he’d become Han Solo’s partner in crime. “I have a shipment of uniforms for the garrison.”

The command ship doesn’t even bother to answer, just sends him a flight path and a clearance code. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding but keeps his feet poised over the pitch and roll pedals just in case he needs to make a fast getaway. _If they send fighters after us, they’re not messing around._

There are no fighters this time, not that he’d really expected them. Hays Minor is far too broken to fight back; no one is expecting smugglers here. It’s night time when he lands and the streets are dark. Thick red dust muffles the sound of his footsteps as he slips toward the clinic that serves the poorest of the miners. Stretching out his mind, he feels for the components of the lock and slides them out of the way. The door opens with a hiss and he deposits three crates of bacta inside the barren exam room. Breaking into the school is no more challenging, and he places a box of rations in each of the classrooms. Half of the data pads are broken, and he makes a mental note to come back here with more, should the opportunity arise.

A pair of gold dice rattles in his pocket. He closes his hand around them, letting the sharp corners bite into his skin. A lump is rising in this throat now, and he knows he can swallow it back, turn the grief into anger and the anger into power. This time he doesn’t let himself. Instead he kneels in the doorway of the schoolhouse and gingerly places the dice on the floor.

There’s a bottle of Corellian brandy in his rucksack, and he pours a shot out on the ground and raises another in a silent toast. It burns going down, and he knows it won’t be enough to make the nightmares stop.

In the morning, he’ll be Kylo Ren again, but tonight he is his father’s son.


End file.
